101056


I was playing around with Google translate to try to figure out how to ask
what's in a container, and it suggested the following two sentences:

箱の中は何ですか

カートには何が入っていますか

So, firstly, why did it give a different sentence structure for "what's in the
box?" vs "what's in the cart?"

Second, are those two sentence structures basically interchangeable, or is
there a different meaning to asking "_の中は何ですか" vs "_には何が入っていますか"?


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2023-09-19T20:11:00.280
101049
2023-09-20T07:59:17.360
57570
question
grammar meaning questions
Asking what's in a container


Grammatically speaking, there is no tricky difference between 箱 ("box") and
カート ("cart"). カートの中は何ですか and 箱には何が入っていますか are both perfectly correct
sentences, too.

As for your second question, as long as you're talking about a container-like
object, the meanings of those two sentence structures are similar. However,
the noun 中 assumes there is an inside _space_ , whereas 何が入っていますか can be used
a little more generically, for example when asking about the ingredients in
food or liquids, or about a spirit currently possessing someone.


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2023-09-20T01:20:57.310
101056
2023-09-20T01:20:57.310
5010
101049
answer


I agree with naruto's description of the nuance; I just want to try to give a
bit more analysis. The relevant sense of 〇〇に入る is "to be contained within 〇〇".
This is more general than 〇〇の中である, which is more like "to exist at the
interior of 〇〇".

Taking a very literal approach:

箱の中は何ですか -> "About the interior of the box, what is there?"

カートには何が入っていますか -> "About the cart, what is being contained within it?" (入っています
is the polite ます ending attached to 入っている, the [te-iru
form](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/3605) of 入る.)


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2023-09-20T07:59:17.360
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answer